


Exes and Ohs

by baunitchief (emeryazure)



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Angsty at first, F/F, I'm sure of it, This is ridiculous, cracky towards the end, there's a little fluff in here somewhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-11 15:36:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15318645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emeryazure/pseuds/baunitchief
Summary: With JJ facing her past decisions, someone from Emily's past pops up in the way she least expects it.





	Exes and Ohs

**Author's Note:**

> honestly, i don't even know what the hell this is. it's a little cracky and melodramatic but that's the fun, isn't it? this is like the BAU version of The L Word or something. i hate and love it so much.
> 
> this came out of nowhere but sure as hell was fun to write so i went with it. i wrote and edited rather quickly so any and all mistakes are mine.
> 
> anyway, have fun with this ridiculous little piece!

Jennifer Jareau was submersed, in tranced and lost in the consult she was working on. It was the typical case of a scorned lover’s revenge, it was honestly an easy case to profile. A husband killed his wife after he found out that she was cheating on him, it was text book. Case closed. But that didn’t stop her from going over the details of the case again and again. Although she knew there was nothing more to the case, something about it was crawling under her skin.

So as she was reviewing the file for the countless time, Emily Prentiss comes parading out of her office with Garcia following quickly behind. The blonde tech analyst makes a b-line for the conference room and the profilers in the room already know the drill. And so most of the team were already standing by the time their brunette unit chief calls out, “We got a case so saddle up.”

The blonde agent is the only one still seated at her desk as the announcement was made. She can’t help but wince slightly, she had hoped to have a nice, calm evening where she could make dinner for her boys with absolutely no serial killers impeding on that wish whatsoever. So much for that dream.

She is most certainly the last to arrive in the conference room as David Rossi, Spencer Reid, Tara Lewis, Matt Simmons and Luke Alvez along with Garcia and Prentiss were all set patiently as she slowly meandered into the room. Luckily, they are all too busy with their heads stuck in the tablets and manila folders that they were presented by Garcia to notice. She finds the brown irises of their leader glancing her way however before she simply turns back to the colorful blonde standing front and center.

“Tell us what we’re looking at Garcia,” Emily nods and the blonde analyst grimaces as she clicks the remote to showcase the body of a teacher, mid-thirties who had been stabbed multiple times.

“Rose Lancaster, 38, was found dead, stabbed forty-three times in the back seat of her car in Reston, Virginia last month,” Garcia relays, looking directly at the team and not at the screen she was presenting the information from.

“It says her body was found in the parking lot of a local elementary school where she was a teacher?” JJ asks with her eyebrows raised, in shock.

“She was found on the Saturday morning following her death by the janitors there,” Garcia confirms with a wince. “Our next victim is Mary Kincaid, a 73-year-old African American and retired school superintendent, was found two weeks ago at a retirement home in Baltimore, Maryland, same M.O. and laying in a similar position that Rose was found in.”

“And the latest victim?” Rossi asks with an eyebrow raised.

“Our latest victim was local law enforcement here in D.C., Officer Miranda Johnson, early 20s,” Garcia says finally. “Officer Johnson was off duty when she was stabbed but the body was found lying face down in the street last night and it looks like she was able to put up more of a fight however.”

JJ’s eyes were combing through the case file, taking in all the information that she could. She knew she wasn’t as fast as Reid but she could only see two things connecting these victims, they are all female and all were stabbed 43 times exactly. She had to voice her question, “What made police connect these victims exactly? I mean, the women cross all age and racial lines.”

“Yeah, I’m curious about that myself, other than the number of times they were stabbed and all being female, they don’t seem to have much in common,” Reid says with his brow furrowed in concentration. “Any sign of sexual assault on the victims?”

“Uh, kind of but not exactly,” the tech analyst says tentatively. “One of the things that local law enforcement are a little conflicted about is that all three victims show signs of recent sexual activity, however no DNA or semen were found on any of the bodies.”

“That’s odd, if this guy was a sexual sadist you would think he would’ve brutally assaulted these women,” Alvez observes. “But only Officer Johnson shows signs of serious assault."

“Maybe he was able to lure Rose Lancaster into a sexual situation but not Officer Johnson,” Reid adds with a nod of his head. “He may not be a sexual sadist, he may just have not been able to get what he wanted from Miranda so he took it.”

“But why would he want to assault Mary Kincaid?” Rossi asks with his eyes squinted in thought. “It just doesn’t add up why she would end up on his list of victims.”

“They all worked for the government in some capacity,” Emily says softly, barely above a whisper but Matt, who was seated next to her, seems to catch it.

“What was that, chief?” he asks curiously with a raised eyebrow.

“They all worked for the government, Rose worked as a teacher in a public school, Mary was a retired superintendent and Miranda was a cop,” Emily says more assured now. Seeming to fit a piece of the puzzle together. “So why would this guy want to target these women?”

“Well, the first two seem more intimate in some fashion,” Lewis answers. “Look at how they are laid face up in a place of comfort like their car or bed but Miranda was attacked and left facedown by a dumpster, he seemed to think of her as literal trash.”

“We need to find out more,” Emily nods in conclusion. “JJ, Matt, go to Reston and find out more about Rose Lancaster, I want Rossi and Reid to learn about Mary Kincaid in Baltimore, me, Luke and Tara will visit the crime scene here in D.C., we’ll meet back here by nine tonight.”

* * *

It was much later that night, Prentiss, Lewis and Alvez were going over what they had found at the Johnson crime scene but they couldn’t seem to agree on anything exactly. That’s when Rossi and Reid show back up at the BAU offices and enter the conference room where their three colleagues were conversing. Emily is quick on her feet however.

“Rossi, Reid, what have you got?” the unit chief asks curiously, hoping that their findings could clear up the conflicting theories they had encountered at their own crime scene.

“From all accounts Mary Kincaid was a beloved wife, grandmother and superintendent,” Reid spouts off. “She was considered one of the experts in her field and was all around respected by the community.”

“And she was also bedridden at the time that she was murdered,” Rossi says with a nod. “So she would’ve been easily subdued by whoever wanted to assault and kill her.”

“We also checked visitor logs, all of which were family and friends of Mary’s,” the young genius offers. “And we managed to interview them but they all checked out.”

“So we need a complete visitors log of all the people that were in the building,” Emily nods, then turns to the machine at the table to speak into. “Garcia, I need you to check into all the names of people at the residential home the night Mary Kincaid was killed.”

“On it, oh Capitan,” Garcia says cheerfully.

“What about people who worked there?” Alvez asks seriously. “Male staff members, nurses, physicians, even support staff.”

“We paid a visit to the one guy who fit our initial profile that was working that night by the name of Howard Marble,” Reid says with a nod. “He’s a white, forty year old janitor but with low level schooling, he didn’t seem to fit with the level of sophistication needed for the crimes, he also has no mode of transportation so he couldn’t have gotten to Reston or Baltimore without getting there by bus.”

“So he’s out,” Rossi concludes and Prentiss nods. They seem to have no clearer picture of the man who had committed these crimes and nothing was becoming any more obvious. That’s when JJ and Matt walk into the conference room and the unit chief seems relieved.

“Hey, what did you guys find?” the older brunette woman asks, perking up by the sight of her agents looking a little more assured of themselves.

“Well, Rose Lancaster was one of the most beloved teachers in the school,” Matt says with a shrug. “She had nothing but glowing reviews from her peers and parents of students.”

“Except for one complaint filed by a concerned mother,” JJ spits a little bitterly at the idea. “The complaint states and I quote, ‘I don’t want that _dyke_ teaching my daughter _anything_ with her feminine _wiles_.’”

“So Rose Lancaster was a lesbian?” Tara asks a little surprised by the revelation.

“Yes, and according to her younger brother, they were out at a bar the Friday night that she was killed,” JJ says seriously, shifting her eyes to her unit chief momentarily, knowing that this was vital information. “She reportedly met a taller blonde woman that night who she went home with.”

“Didn’t we profile that the unsub more than likely seduced Rose the night she was killed?” Rossi asks a little confused. “It doesn’t exactly fit that she went home with a woman.”

“It does if we consider that this unsub might be female,” JJ says seriously, she knows that suggesting something of this magnitude could shift the entire course of the investigation. But she is a firm believer in following where the evidence leads her. She knows she might be onto something when she sees Emily’s head snap back to the board they had assembled and is staring at the body of Officer Johnson.

“It does make sense that a woman would have a much easier time slipping into Mary Kincaid’s room undetected,” Reid regales before he is cut off by Tara who seems to be having a revelation of her own.

“That’s it, why we seemed to have conflicting evidence at Miranda’s scene,” the tall woman says as she is also looking at Officer Johnson. “The struggle she encountered doesn’t fit with the wounds received when a man overpowers a woman, instead the fight was scrappier, they seemed more evenly matched and Johnson clearly had the training to fight back.”

“Do we really think this unsub is a lesbian woman?” Alvez asks, a little perplexed by the evidence being presented to him. “I mean, what about the clear sexual assault found on Miranda’s body?”

Emily seems to be staring a little wide eyed at the board in front of her, she hadn’t torn her eyes away since JJ had revealed her hunch. The team could all tell that her mind was running rampant but even Spencer seems lost as to what his unit chief could possibly be calculating.

“Garcia,” Emily suddenly tears her eyes away, speaking directly into the speaker on the table. “Make an appointment with the M.E. on the Johnson case, I need to speak with him.”

“Consider it done, Princess,” Garcia sings and before she is able to cut the line, she is stopped short by Emily offering another order in her direction.

“And widen your search to white women, aged thirty-five to forty-five,” the unit chief relays.

“D-Did you say a woman, ma’am?” the tech analyst asks, a little alarmed by the news. “We think a woman did this to all these women?”

“It’s a real possibility,” Emily nods, she finally looks up at the eyes of the team that were trained on her. Only Reid, JJ, Matt and Tara seem to truly believe it possible where Rossi and Alvez were more than a little skeptical.

“Uh, right, okay,” Garcia says hesitantly, fumbling slightly over her words. “Got it.”

Tara seems to be in deep thought for a moment before she speaks up, “You said white woman, what makes you think that she’s white? She could’ve easily pretended to be Kincaid’s daughter if she was black.”

“A black lesbian would stand out in a city like Reston,” Emily says with a shake of her head. “It’s where the killing started and its a predominantly white city with a ruling class system, she wouldn’t blend in easily.”

“Say it is a woman, what would connect her to a kind, old woman like Mary Kincaid?” Rossi asks sincerely confused by all the other's have seemed to come to conclusion on.

“She may possibly be from Baltimore,” Emily says with a nod. “I think it’s possible she was living in Reston and something about Rose set her off which lead her back to Baltimore to kill Mary which would mean that out of all her kills, Kincaid was the most personal one.”

“Look at Rose and Miranda, similar heights and builds,” JJ says shaking her head before her blue eyes land back on their unit chief as she sees something of a similarity between the two victims and her old friend standing in front of her. “Rose has dark brown hair and brown eyes, Miranda, brown eyes and black hair... if she’s hunting women, she seems to have a type.”

“Okay so they look alike,” Alvez observes, just as dubious as Rossi about the whole matter. “But what the hell drove her to DC to kill?”

“I haven’t figured that part out yet,” Prentiss says with a shake of her head, JJ watches the woman closely as her chin tilts down slightly, her eyes darting from side to side. “We need to learn more, Rossi, Reid, I need you back in Baltimore tomorrow and digging through the life of Mary Kincaid to find out how her and the unsub could’ve possibly crossed paths. JJ, Tara and I will go to the ME’s office in the morning.”

“What about us, boss?” Simmons asks dutifully, making eye contact with Alvez who’s nostrils are flaring and jaw seems to tighten.

“Stay here with Garcia,” Emily nods towards the two men. “And help her find a further connection between all three of these women and compile a list of potential unsubs.”

Alvez and Simmons both offer nods and share a determined look with each other.

“Alright, let’s get some sleep,” the unit chief rallies. “We won’t know more until we visit the ME and start digging more into Mary Kincaid’s life. Get some rest and we'll meet back by 6am.”

* * *

By the time JJ pulls into her driveway, it is ten-thirty at night. She knows that the boys had to have already been passed out. She hates that she didn’t get a night to herself with her two sons but she knows that it comes with the territory, if she wanted a more stable job, she knew she could find it but the problem was that she could never quit the BAU.

When she walks into the home, she hears the television playing one the myriad of children’s films that the boys loved. Recently they were fond of _Coco_ and indeed, the credits of the film were rolling as JJ rounded the corner to the living area from the foyer. There she saw her mother with Michael wrapped up asleep in her arms and Henry was lights out as he was sprawled on the couch.

“Hey, sweetie,” Sandy Jareau says from her seat in the recliner. “How was work?”

“Oh, you know,” the blonde agent says with a shrug, not wanting to indulge before she walks further into the room. She quickly takes Michael from her mother and enwraps him in her arms. “When did the boys finally give in?”

“Well, Michael has been passed out for a couple of hours,” the older blonde says with a smile. “But Henry here kept fighting until he finally gave in about thirty minutes ago.”

“Thanks for watching them, mom,” JJ says with a sighs as she caresses her youngest son’s blonde tresses before she lands a kiss on his forehead. “And thanks for staying here for a while.”

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be,” Sandy says with a smile before it falls and JJ watches her mother’s expression closely. “So, um, Will came by earlier, I hope you don’t mind that I let him have dinner with the boys, I mean I just figured-”

“It’s fine, mom, he’s still their father,” the younger woman appeases but she’s uncomfortable with the idea a little. “I guess as long as I don’t have to deal with him then it’s fine, it’s unfair to keep him from the boys just because of me, you know?”

“Have you guys talked at all recently?” the woman asks tentatively. She didn’t want to make her daughter angry but she also wanted to know where the former couple stood.

“You mean, other than talking about divorce proceedings or things for the boys?” JJ says with a roll of her eyes. “No, why would we?”

“Well, you told me that the separation was mutual,” the woman’s mother probes. “You just said that Will found someone else and that you had always had some regrets being with him but now you hardly ever speak to the man and you aren’t opening up about it.”

“Mom, it was mutual but at the same time, it still hurts knowing you chose the wrong person to spend your life with,” JJ says with a shrug. “I guess I’m more heartbroken for the boys than anything, that they have to see their family torn apart.”

“You talk as if you had another option,” Sandy says with confusion.

“Maybe I did once, maybe I didn’t,” the blonde agent says with a shake of her head. “I’ll never know cause I wasn’t brave enough to try and I guess I’m still not.”

“Is it that Reid man?” the older woman asks. “I know you two went on a date before but I thought that-”

“No, of course not, mom,” JJ says with an avid shake of her head. “Reid is like my brother.”

“Then who?” Sandy can’t help but ask in her motherly curiosity. “I just want to see you happy, Jennifer, and all I see is you moping around and looking miserable.”

“I can’t tell you, mom,” the younger mother says, looking back at the woman. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“What wouldn’t I understand?” the woman asks with real concern. She was looking at her daughter as if she was made up of cyphers and undistinguishable matter. “Jennifer, you can talk to me.”

“Today we were digging into the life of a woman who was killed,” JJ says with a shake of her head. “She was a beloved teacher but we met with one of the mothers of the children she taught and you know what she said to us?”

“What’s that, honey?” the elderly mother says with a shake of her head, she was confused about the turn in conversation but she would take any sign of JJ opening up to her.

“She said ‘thank god the dyke is dead,’” JJ relays with disbelief, staring off at nothing. “It just reminds me of high school I guess, do you remember Jenny from school? How she came back her junior year, had cut off her hair and came out as a lesbian, the kids at school did everything short of burning her at the stake and I guess that’s affected me for longer than I realized.”

Sandy Jareau, in that moment, seems to come to a realization of her own but she is stunned speechless, all she wants is to comfort her daughter but she cannot move for the moment. JJ just shakes her head and rubs at the corner of her eye where a tear had made its way there.

“I’m sorry, I’m just tired, it’s been a long day,” the younger blonde mother says quickly. “I should really get the boys to bed, do you mind getting Henry?”

“Of course not, dear,” Sandy says with a shake of her head. “You take care of Michael.”

And with that, JJ exits the room to take her youngest son up to his room. She tries not to dwell in the silence that her mother had found at what her daughter had all but admitted. But it didn’t matter anyway, the blonde agent knew she had made the wrong decision ten years ago and it was destined to haunt her for the rest of her life.

* * *

The three female agents were in the black SUV, it was seven in the morning and none of them had slept much with the case still leaving so much to mystery. The unit chief was driving, JJ had offered but the older woman was used to people carting her around and relished every moment she gets behind the wheel. So there was easy conversation between the three, Tara was fascinated that this unsub could possibly be a woman. She hadn’t quite seen a case like this and it exhilarated her.

“So what exactly are we looking for at the ME’s, Em?” JJ asks curiously, Emily hadn’t said much about the lead she was following and it was driving the other two female agents up a wall trying to figure it out so she had to ask.

“We need to know if a woman did this or not,” Prentiss says seriously. “The ME will have more insight into her defensive wounds and assault.”

“The assault would be especially telling,” Tara says with a nod. “If it was a woman, the tearing to the tissue wouldn’t be as severe and there would be other signs that a woman did this.”

“Exactly,” Emily says with a single nod of agreement. JJ just stares at her unit chief in deep thought, her mind had been reeling with trouble since yesterday and it seemed destined to continue with whatever they were to find out today.

The older woman pulls up to the office building and as the women exit the vehicle, there seems to be a reverent silence falling over them all now. They enter the building the same way until they are lead into the presence of an older man clearly in his late fifties with graying hair and a balding scalp.

“Dr. Maddox, I’m SSA Emily Prentiss,” the brunette says as she shakes the man’s hand before gesturing to the women behind her. “This is SSA Jennifer Jareau and Dr. Tara Lewis.”

“Thank you for meeting with us, Doctor,” Tara says with a nod of her head while she meets the man’s hand.

JJ follows up in the same manner, “Good to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you fine ladies but I guess there’s no delaying the inevitable,” the man says as he leads the trio of women through the double doors behind him. They each grab a pair of gloves as they make their way into the examination room and find themselves face-to-face with Officer Miranda Johnson.

“Tell us what you’ve found, doctor,” Emily asks easily as she takes in the sight of the woman. There’s an eerie similarity that she tries to push away. It felt like she was staring into the face of a family member with the woman’s dark hair, pale skin and prominent features.

“Well, the wounds that Officer Johnson received at first were typical of something you see in a woman defending herself,” the man says. “You see bruising on her shoulders and cheek area but the fight was relatively short lived, Officer Johnson seems to have fallen and received blunt force trauma to the head, killing her almost instantly.”

“So the stabbings wasn't what kill her?” JJ asks with a furrowed brow.

“No, she was already dead by the time the subject pulled her knife,” the man says seriously.

“ _Her_ knife?” Tara asks, surprised by the man’s conclusion.

“Why yes, the wounds received in the fight were mostly superficial as I stated in my initial report,” the man relays the information that he had discovered. “It’s more in line with what you would see when two woman fight, there was more shoving and pulling, part of the hair on the back of head had been ripped out, the stab wounds are shallower than a man's would be and a bruise on the woman’s backside was caused by a smaller hand, you’re looking for a female probably around 5’7 or 5’8.”

“You said you wrote up a report but we didn’t receive one with all the other information on the case,” Emily says confused as she addresses him.

“Ah, that is somehow not surprising,” the man sighs. “When I told investigators looking into the case that it was most certainly a woman who killed Officer Johnson, they all thought I was mad to think a female capable of such violence and I’m pretty sure they would’ve disregarded my initial report.”

“Can we get a copy?” the unit chief asks dutifully. The man reaches over and grabs a stack of papers and hands a stapled copy to each woman.

“I had anticipated as much and went ahead and prepared them for you,” the man says with a nod as he watches the women silently reading over the files. He simply waits for further questions.

“You determined she was definitely sexually assaulted in the attack,” Tara says with a nod, looking up from her own stack of papers.

“And it says here that she was assaulted post-mortem?” JJ adds as a follow-up.

“Yes, as I said Officer Johnson’s death was caused by blunt force trauma,” the man nods. “Any and all further damage was done after the woman was deceased including her sexual assault.”

“That means that Miranda probably didn’t give her what she wanted,” Emily says quietly as she looks at the young woman lying dead on the table.

“The woman wouldn’t have felt the same sense of power and control if Miranda was already dead,” JJ says with an agreeing nod. “That could cause her to kill another woman sooner, needing the release that she didn’t find through Miranda’s death.”

“We need to call Garcia, Luke and Matt and tell them what we found,” Emily says seriously as she looks at the two other women in the room. “We also need to let Rossi and Reid know that we confirmed that the unsub is a woman. Thank you for your time, doctor.”

“Anytime,” the man says with a shake of his head. “I just hope you find her before she can do this to anyone else’s daughter.”

The three woman nod as they are quick to leave, ridding themselves of their gloves on the way out and as they enter into the hallway leading to the exit. Tara takes out her phone and regales, “I’ll call Rossi and Reid and let them know.”

Emily goes for her own phone to call Garcia before she is pulled back by the blonde who has grabbed a hold of her by the arm, “Wait, Em.”

“What’s up, Jay?” the older woman asks distractedly as she was still fiddling with the phone in her hand.

“You’re hiding something, I can tell,” JJ says seriously, her brow furrowed. “The way you seemed to link the first two victims last night and then how you were looking at Officer Johnson in there, I know you know something that you’re not sharing with us.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Emily denies and JJ thinks she’s good at that. Anyone else might be easily fooled but not the young blonde agent. Not after everything.

“You may be able to fool everyone else on the team but you can’t do that with me, Em,” JJ says with a shake of her head. “I know you better than probably anyone else so what is it?”

“It’s nothing, there’s just something about this case that feels familiar, that’s all,” the woman offers softly and JJ starts to open her mouth to inquire more but she is cut off by the unit chief’s phone in her hand that starts to ring. “Garcia, we were just about to call you.”

“Emily, DC Metro homicide found the body of another woman who has been stabbed 43 times,” Garcia says with a grave tone to her voice and Emily sighs before her hand falls to the bridge of her nose.

“Send us the address,” Emily relays. “JJ, Tara and I can be there ASAP.”

JJ releases her own sigh, she knows what that means by now. Another woman had been murdered. Another victim to add to this woman’s already too long list.

“Em, there’s something you need to know before you get there,” Garcia says seriously. “The victim has been identified as Fiona Duncan.”

“We’re on our way,” Emily says slightly detached before disconnecting the line. She looks at JJ and nods as they make their way back to the SUV.

* * *

On their way to the scene, JJ notices Emily puts on the flashing blue and red lights and is speeding her way through the city traffic quickly. This wouldn’t be unusual if they were chasing an unsub but for simply heading to the scene of a crime where the victim was already deceased, it was. She had noticed a tension laced in the older woman’s shoulders since she had received the call from Garcia but she couldn't know what it is.

Emily hadn’t been forthcoming with any information other than another woman had been found stabbed 43 times. The blonde was surprised to find them pulling up to the back of the familiar courthouse, she had been there often on cases, for Reid’s in particular and she had been there to have her own divorce papers drawn up.

They all exit the vehicle swiftly as they see the usual signs of an ongoing police investigation. They make their way under the yellow tape and past the men and women of the CSI combing for evidence around the body, the women all take a pair of gloves handed to them by a nearby officer however.

But JJ is nearly stopped in her tracks when she spots her soon to be ex-husband examining the body in a kneeled position, discussing something with his partner. The younger agent hadn’t told anyone about her pending divorce, she still shamefully wore the wedding ring to keep up appearances but they were both at work on a case, they were expected to be professional. This would be easy if the man is on the same wavelength as her, she hoped he would be.

Another shock is sent through JJ’s body as she nears closer to the woman that had been murdered. She instantly recognized the mocha skin that was now turning an odd shade of blue. She’d recognize the woman anywhere, especially the woman’s freckles as she finally comes to a stop hovering over her lifeless body. No one says anything or moves for a moment, they are all stunned silent at this victim.

“Will,” the female partner that JJ knew was assigned with her husband says as she nods at the feds.

“JJ, Emily, hey,” the man greets, looking up as he spots them, he stands and nods in acknowledgement of Tara as well. “I recognized her from Reid’s case and we found the ID on her.”

The blonde simply nods, she’s surprised by her own hand reaching out and squeezing the man’s bicep as he stood next to her in a sign of solidarity and nothing more. Tara seems a little less stunned and more objective than JJ, Emily or Will at the moment. In fact, their brunette unit chief hadn’t budged from her position over the woman’s head. She simply stares now and JJ knows she will have to lead on this.

Tara takes in the state of the woman, she was lying face up like the first two victims but in a more careless way. Her shirt had been ripped open and they all knew that the plastic placed below her waist was to hide that fact that she was naked from the waist down.

The taller agent observes, “There’s less sign of struggle here than with Officer Johnson but she still seems to have fought back and it seems she was strangled to keep her in line as the unsub stabbed her.”

“Sexual assault?” JJ asks as she looks towards Will and his partner in question.

“Looks that way,” the man says with a nod of his head. “Her pants were ripped off and there’s bruising but we won’t know until she’s sent to the ME’s office.”

“Right,” JJ says as she carefully squats down next to the woman she knew as a good lawyer as well as a long-term friend of Emily’s and who became a good friend to both her and Reid. “Fiona fits this woman’s type, powerful defense attorney working for the government, brown hair, brown eyes.”

“She wasn’t stabbed 43 times, she was stabbed 44,” Tara says as she looks over the woman’s torso. “One of the stab wounds could've been easily missed cause it landed in the exact same wound already inflicted over the left side of her chest. She was stabbed more times in the chest area than the other victims, a woman would have a harder time cutting through the breast bone so she would try to avoid it for a long as possible but she specifically seemed to target Fiona in this area. Why?”

“Kincaid seemed to be the most personal kill until now,” JJ says with a shake of her head in confusion. “With Officer Johnson, the attack seemed random and like she wasn’t being picky with her selection of victims but this seems even more personal like maybe she’s getting closer to the source of her actual rage. We need to deliver the profile.”

Tara nods in agreement and both woman look up at their unit chief who was still simply staring at the woman and unmoving. The other two women make eye contact again, seeming more than a little worried about the state of their leader at the moment. Both wonder unsaid if this was too close.

“Em,” JJ says as she stands and rids herself of the set of gloves for the second time that day. She doesn’t take her concerned eyes off the dark-haired woman at all however. “Emily!”

The unit chief finally seems to break her constant staring with the corpse of her friend and her head snaps up as her brown irises that shed no tears meet the blue of the younger agent now.

“We need to deliver the profile,” JJ says with a serious nod to her head. “She’s escalating.”

Emily just shakes her head now as she takes one final look at the state of her lifeless friend, “We don’t need to deliver a profile because I know exactly who did this.”

“What?” Tara asks, completely shocked as she stands as well now. Looking completely lost at the senior woman now. JJ doesn’t take her eyes off of Emily however as the older woman starts to turn back to the SUVs.

“Call Rossi and Reid back to Quantico,” the brunette says, barely turning her head back towards her agents. “I need to brief everyone on what we’re facing here.”

That’s when their unit chief takes her phone back out, surely to call Garcia and tell her who they were looking for. But Tara looks at JJ incredulously, inquiring with only outstretched hands but the blonde simply shakes her head and shrugs. She knows that the tall woman had expected her to know what Emily was talking about, JJ always seemed more in tune with the chief than anyone on the team but the younger woman was just as unknowing and sighs frustrated.

“Thanks, Will,” JJ nods seriously as she turns back to the man and looking one last time at the victim who hit so close. “Take care of her, alright?”

“O’ course,” the man says with a nod, squinting in the sunlight, his Cajun accent sounding thick through his words before he nods in the direction that Emily had gone. “You should go take care of her, right?”

“Yeah, right,” she agrees as she turns and walks back towards the SUVs herself. Tara following, falling in step beside her.

“You’re one lucky woman, Agent Jareau,” Tara says with a rye smile and insinuation in her tone.

“What are you talking about?” JJ asks in confusion but she doesn’t tear her eyes away from the figure standing next to the dark vehicle that was pacing and still talking on the phone.

“Detective LaMontagne,” Tara says with a raise of her eyebrows as she nudges the blonde a little with her shoulder. “All dark and broody, I get it now and I’m a little jealous.”

JJ can’t help but laugh a little ruefully, thinking that anyone was jealous of her situation with Will was ridiculous but she knew her tall friend was just as clueless as everyone else at what was really going on. So the younger woman just shrugs and shakes her head, “You have no reason to be, trust me.”

* * *

The drive back was more tense than any of the women could ever remember being around each other. JJ had insisted on driving and Emily had fought her a little on it before the blonde was able to manage the keys away from the older woman. No one talks about the case, no one says anything in fact and all were sinking into their own minds. For Tara and JJ, it was how Emily could possibly know the woman who did this but for the unit chief, she was flashing back to another lifetime.

So when they arrive back at the BAU, it’s no surprise when the older woman heads directly for her office with no further word. They were to wait for Rossi and Reid to arrive back from Baltimore and they were to stew in their own speculation and theories. JJ and Tara had just set down at their desks when Luke and Matt join them in the bullpen.

“Hey, we heard you guys were back,” Matt says as he takes a seat on JJ’s desk. Luke finds himself standing between the two women and seems sullen. “How’s the chief doing?”

“It hit her hard but it’s not much easier for me either,” JJ says with a shrug. “Fiona was a friend to all of us during Reid’s stint… Where’s Garcia?”

“She’s compiling some ‘need-to-know’ information for Emily for the briefing,” Luke regales, seeming a little frustrated now. “She practically kicked us out of her office after Emily called.”

“So what do you guys know about this mystery woman and why our unit chief is holing herself up in her office?” Matt asks with a raise of his eyebrow as he wears concern on his face.

“I have no idea, Emily shut down when she saw Fiona and all she said was that she knew exactly who did this,” JJ offers the little information she had. “I just hope that whoever this woman is, we can find her quick.”

“This may seem like a stretch but do you think this woman could actually be targeting Emily?” Tara asks, she was hoping she was completely off but none of them were ignorant to the connections here.

“I have no idea,” JJ sighs as her head falls into her hands, leaning against the desk. “I mean Rose and Miranda both look similar to Emily and Fiona was Emily’s friend but… I don’t know.”

“It seems too big of a coincidence to be an actual coincidence, right?” Alvez asks rhetorically and JJ sighs, she knew the man was right. She just hoped they were all wrong about the matter.

That’s when Reid comes through the glass doors of the BAU, Rossi following slower behind him. The genius seems to be making a straight line for his best friend and JJ is immediately on her feet to greet him as he find her in a sudden hug. The blonde simply says, “Spence.”

“I can’t believe she’s dead,” Reid says shocked, there was a little emotion in his voice but he seemed to be holding together rather well. “Why does it seem like anyone close to us ends up dead?”

“That’s not true, Spence,” JJ says with a shake of her head as she pulls away from the man, looking him in the eye. “We’re all still here and we’re gonna find the woman that did this to Fiona, alright?”

“Yeah, of course,” Reid says with a more assured nod now. “Luke said that Emily knows who the unsub is, has she said anything?”

“No, she was waiting on you guys to get back to brief us,” JJ says as she meets Rossi stoic face, he was hanging back further from the group when suddenly his head snaps up to see the unit chief exiting her office. All the agents follow his eye sight and sees the woman who looked worse for wear, her eyes were dry of tears but the dark circles there were apparent.

“Conference room, now,” is all Emily says before she makes her way there herself. The team seems to simply nod and prepare themselves as best they can for the information they were about to learn as they make their way into the roundtable room.

* * *

The team were all sat in their seats, JJ was next to Reid as moral support and she was directly in front of where Emily stood leaning over the conference table and seemed to be managing to gather herself and her nerve. The rest of the team were set quietly, all on the edge of their seats from the tension in the room. You could hear a pin drop.

Emily then stands back straight as she meets the curious eyes that had fallen on her now. She knew this couldn’t be like the last time something like this had happened, she couldn’t keep secrets, not anymore. She had to be completely transparent which causes the intense discomfort she was experiencing now.

“Most of you think you know me and it’s true that some of you know me better than most but,” the unit chief starts, avoiding eye contact for the moment. “Most of you know my history, the story with Matthew Benton and John Cooley and of course, Ian Doyle.”

JJ watches on as the older woman fidgets uneasily in her stance, she sees the woman fighting to keep from pulling on the nailbeds in nervous habit. She didn’t know what this was but she knew it had to be big for Emily to be acting this way. For her to be bringing up her past, particularly with Ian Doyle.

“As most of you know, when Ian Doyle was initially arrested, I faked the death of his son, Declan, to protect him from his father,” Emily says with a sigh. “I moved to a city called Reston, Virginia where I enrolled Declan in a private school there under a different name.”

“That’s right,” Reid says suddenly, shocking himself by not remembering this small detail. “How could I forget that you lived there?”

“Well, while I was there, I became involved with a woman named Iris Anne Preston,” Emily says with a nod of her head as she hit the remote in front of her to reveal a picture on the screen of a beautiful blonde haired woman in what looked to be a school faculty photo. The brown eyes of the woman go to the ceiling for a moment before meeting back at the even, unjudgmental eyes of her team. “She was a teacher at the school that Declan was attending and over time we grew close.”

Matt shakes his head and, with his brow furrowed, asks, “What happened?”

“At the start, she was everything I thought I wanted, intelligent, beautiful and seemed to have her head on straight,” Emily continues with a nod and then a shake of her head. “I was wrong about that however, most who know me knows that I’m not great at attachment so it’s easy to guess that Iris was more invested than I was and so about a month into our relationship, I mentioned moving out here and taking a spot at the BAU and that’s when things started to change.”

Garcia, who’s jaw seems to be hanging loose as she was entirely enwrapped in what her unit chief was telling them, asks, “Things changed how?”

“She started showing her true colors,” the brunette relays. “She became controlling and manipulative to the point that I refused to put up with it anymore and I broke it off. See, this woman had grown up in Baltimore, she was from a middle class family but her dad left when she was a teenager, it was just Iris and her mother, who at the time that we were dating had cancer and was dying. Iris had moved her mother from Baltimore to Reston when she had received the job at the prep school.”

“So when you threatened to leave, she knew she couldn’t follow you,” Alvez guesses, seeming to understand more of the story now.

“Yes, she couldn’t leave her mother and I never expected her to, but she thought she was losing me and when she pushed me to the point of that actually happening,” Emily says with a sideways tilt of her head. “It set Iris off more than I could’ve ever imagined.”

JJ was simply sitting there, she knew her eyes were wide, eyebrows raised in her surprised. She hadn’t known any of this before now. Emily had never told her or Garcia about this, in fact, she had never once even mentioned dating or being interested in women at all. But for some reason, this was still a shock despite the fact that this actually seemed obvious to everyone who knew the woman.

“After we broke up, I stayed in Reston a little while longer to make sure Declan was acclimating well and to ensure his safety,” Emily nods. “That’s when he came home one day and he was taking off his lacrosse uniform and I noticed that he had a bruise the size of a handprint on the small of his back.”

“Oh no,” Garcia whimpers, thinking about the curly headed blonde boy.

“It turns out that after I broke it off with her, Iris became stricter at the school,” the unit chief regales solemnly. “She had started punishing the boys by spanking them to the point that they would bleed, at that point I couldn’t expose myself nor Declan but I started talking to other parents and they wanted to press charges against the woman and Fiona was just starting to make a name for herself so I recommended her to lead the case.”

“That’s why Iris targeted Fiona,” JJ says with a nod of her head. It was starting to make sense now.

“Yes, Iris was convicted of abuse of a minor and was sentenced to four years in prison in 2007, a year for each of the boys that had come forth with their stories of abuse,” Emily says as she clicked the remote again and another picture of the woman popped up next to the normal faculty photo. This was a mugshot however, and the woman’s blonde hair was flying in different directions while her eyes were darker, grey circles had formed bags under the woman’s blue irises that looked absolutely obsessive.

“She looks straight out of _Snapped_ ,” Garcia comments, looking at the crazed-eyed woman now.

“Iris was released after serving a four year sentence,” Emily says with a sigh. “I knew at the time of her conviction that she blamed me for everything that had happened and what she had done, she also knew Fiona as we had once all had dinner together, she also knew my past with Fiona.”

“Past?” Reid asks with furrowed eyebrows.

“Fiona and I dated in college but decided we were better off as friends, she was actually one of the few sane exes that I had,” Emily regales mournfully. “So on top of the fact that Iris knew she was the lawyer that had her convicted, she was also convinced that I had broken up with her to get back with Fiona.”

“She became obsessed,” Tara says with a nod of her head. “That’s why she seemed to take that much more rage out on Fiona than any of the other victims.”

“But she was released years ago,” Rossi says. “Why didn’t she come straight after you?”

“You joined the BAU in 2006, she was convicted in 2007 and then released four years later,” JJ seems to be adding it all up in her head. “What is the date that she was actually released?”

“Uh, that would be,” Garcia says as she pulls something up on her tablet and verifies. “April 2011.”

“And Ian Doyle nearly killed you in March 2011 so for all intents and purposes, Iris thought you were dead,” JJ says seriously. “But you were hiding in Paris so she couldn’t find you.”

“Exactly, she must’ve gone dormant when she thought I was dead, thinking she’d never have her revenge,” Emily nods. “She must’ve been living in Reston under an assumed identity until she snapped after meeting Rose Lancaster.”

“Who could practically be your twin if you think about it,” Matt says softly, looking back at the victim on the board. “But how does Mary Kincaid fit in to all of this?”

“That’s where I come in,” Garcia quips before she is back going through the tablet in front of her. “Emily asked me to look into Iris Preston’s childhood, it turns out that before she became a superintendent that Mary Kincaid taught at a middle school in the 80s where Iris attended, at the time teachers were able to take matters into their own hands and it seems that Mrs. Kincaid was more strict than most. She had a reputation for spanking children and we have to assume that Iris was one of those children.”

“So Mary Kincaid was her old tormentor before she turned you into her ultimate villain,” Rossi nods before pointing at the unit chief who agrees.

“And it seems that Officer Johnson was a victim of opportunity,” the brunette woman says. “She had no connection to Iris but Preston might have seen her as a threat or possibly as a stand-in for me so she took the chance to go after her but didn’t get what she wanted.”

“So how do we find her?” Matt asks suddenly, ready to jump into action with catching this woman.

“That is going to be a bit trickier,” Garcia says tentatively. “See, Iris Marie Preston seemingly disappeared off the face of the planet and seemed to stop existing after she was released from prison.”

“So we have to assume that she is living under either one or more assumed identities,” Emily says with a sigh. “We’re gonna need to comb through my memories of Iris to see if we can find any clue as to where she would go but as far as I can remember she didn’t have any connections here in DC so if we can’t find her the conventional way, then we’re gonna have to give her what she really wants.”

“No, Em,” JJ immediately protests with a vehement shake of her head.

“Like hell,” Rossi follows up.

“Not again,” Garcia seems to say in tandem.

“We’re not going to let you hand yourself over to another psychopath, Emily,” Reid says seriously as he faced his unit chief. “We will find her before it comes to that.”

“That’s what I’m hoping but we have a lot of work ahead of us,” the older woman says as she addresses the team now, looking at each one of them before landing on Tara. “Tara, this is where I believe we can utilize your particular skill sets in psychology, my relationship with Iris was honestly mostly forgettable and I only remember her for how the relationship ended so I need to trigger some memories.”

“Alright, I’ll start drawing up some preliminary questions now,” Tara says with a nod of her head as she stands with a notebook in her grasp.

“What do you need us to do?” Luke asks, looking between the two women standing hoping he could be of some help to the cause.

“I need you guys to start probing Emily, ask her things that you would any friend when you find out they started a new relationship,” Tara says seriously as she addresses her teammates. “Let me do some research and I’ll be back.”

“Well, this is a little unconventional,” Rossi says with a raise of his eyebrows. “But it does take me back to when the unit first began before we had people like Reid and Garcia.”

“This could be fun, it’ll be like girls night,” Garcia says with a small smile on her face and a little bounce in her chair before everyone turns to her looking a little incredulous. “Well, I mean as much fun as a girls night could be while chasing a lesbian serial killer?”

“This could be the only way to catch her,” Reid says thoughtfully as he sits straighter in his seat. “If Emily really is the object of her rage, then only Emily would actually have the information that we need to find her.”

The unit chief simply rolls her eyes and she takes a seat at the table and sighs, “Look, I’m willing to do anything to catch this woman and put her away once and for all so don’t be shy, come on, hit me with questions.”

“Ooh, okay, I’ll start,” Garcia says as she claps her hands together slightly. “Where did you and Iris first meet?”

“Uh, we met at a back-to-school gathering where parents and kids meet the teachers,” Emily recalls. “Declan and I both attended the event at the school shortly after we moved there.”

“We’re you initially attracted to Iris or did she grow on you over time?” Alvez asks and again, a few of their team members look at him incredulously, Matt and JJ particularly.

“Is that even a valid question when it comes to the case?” JJ asks with a raise of her eyebrow, if she was being honest she didn’t know if she wanted to know the answer to the question.

“It is because it helps Prentiss remember the full scope of her memories with Iris,” Tara says as she rejoins the group and takes her seat back at the table as she seems to be writing a few things down.

“Alright, look, no question are off limits, I guess,” Emily groans little, thinking back to the moment and nods her head. “I was initially attracted to her, yeah but I didn’t act on it at first because I didn’t want to interfere with Declan’s life more than I needed to.”

“So when would you say is the first time that you and Iris actually connected?” Matt asks with a sly smirk now.

“One day, Tom, the man who was raising Declan as his own, was called out of the country on business,” the brunette regales. “So I had to pick him up from school and I was so late getting there, he was the last one left in the class and Iris was nice enough to stay with him.”

“And?” Garcia asks with a raised eyebrow.

“And we struck up a conversation, she commented that Declan didn’t look like either Tom or myself and asked if I was his actual mother and I said that I had adopted him,” Emily shrugs. “She thought Tom and I were married and all I said was that we were together, had adopted Declan but weren’t together anymore, she stated that she thought adoption was honorable because she was gay and I told her that I was bisexual and I guess that’s when we hit off.”

“Who asked out who?” Luke asks with a smile of his own.

“You guys are enjoying this a little too much,” Emily states with another roll of her eyes but she answers anyway. “I asked her out a couple of weeks later.”

“What did you do for your first date?” Reid asks, he was staying serious knowing this more for than the investigation than probing into Emily’s life.

“We, uh, went for drinks, you know me, it was a casual thing,” Prentiss shrugs. “I wasn’t exactly up for commitment at the time.”

“But did you guys sleep together on the first date?” Garcia asks with an expectant look on her face. Yes, she was certainly enjoying this more than the rest of them. JJ nearly protests again but she remembers that Emily had said that no questions were off limits so she stays quiet.

“Uh, we did actually,” Emily says, thinking back to that night with her brow furrowed. She seems deep in thought about the consequences of those actions now. As were the rest of the team.

“That right there could’ve been a sign to Iris that you were more serious about her than you let on,” Rossi observes, he didn’t want to sound accusatory but they all knew it was true.

“I mean we all know the legend of lesbians and their U-Hauls,” Garcia comments. “No wonder she got attached to you almost immediately, she saw a strong, sexy law enforcement agent and she leapt at the chance of stability.”

“Yeah, maybe,” the older woman says with a nod of her head before she shakes it again. “But I wouldn’t exactly say I had my shit together, I was in between jobs and scared that Doyle would be able to track us back to the states so I wouldn’t say I was the picture of stability.”

“Yeah but Em, even when you started at the BAU, you always overcompensated for what you thought you lacked and none of us were able to detect that something was up,” JJ observes but then thinks better of it. “Well, Hotch and I had an inkling after how you reacted to Reid’s abduction but we still didn’t doubt you.”

“JJ’s right,” Garcia nods and shrugs. “I always thought you were the coolest, albeit the most mysterious member of the team and all I wanted was to be your friend.”

“Alright, we’ve gotten a little off track but this is good, we’ve refreshed Emily’s mind a little on her relationship with Iris,” Tara says seriously. “Now I want to go a little deeper, we know that Iris grew up in Baltimore and that she had Mary Kincaid as a teacher, do you remember ever hearing stories about that time in her life?”

“All I remember is that she said she had a pretty strict upbringing and school was no different,” Emily says with a shrug. “I do remember her father was involved with politics though and I related to that because of my mother.”

“Do you remember ever hearing what her father did specifically in Baltimore?” Tara asks and Emily seems to think deeply about this for a moment before something hits her suddenly.

“She told me that right before her father left that he had run a successful campaign for a woman she had had as a teacher,” the brunette says with a nod of her head, remembering more clearly. “It was a superintendent race and he had done so well that he left his family to pursue his career.”

“Good, good,” Tara says with a smile, probing her unit chief a little further. “Do you remember hearing where the man had gone after he left?”

“No, no, I mean Iris never heard from him again after he left,” Emily shrugs. “She just assumed he had gone to pursue politics in… Washington…”

“DC?” Matt asks seriously, sitting up straighter in his chair.

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Emily nods towards the man but she knew they needed more of a lead.

Tara knew that they were close to getting something of substance out of the woman so she asks the question that she hopes Emily can give an answer to, “Do you remember her father’s name?”

“Kevin…” Emily surprises herself how easily the name pops back into her memory after so many years, over a decade now. “His name was Kevin Preston, Garcia, Matt, I need you to look into any politicians in DC, Virginia and Maryland with that name.”

“Already on it,” Garcia says as she pulled up some information on her tablet and was already standing from her table to escape to her lair. Matt was following behind before she quickly turns around and says, “Someone better record this because I do not need to miss any of the juicy details.”

With the team chuckling slightly, she makes her quick exit and Simmons simply rolls his eyes before he follows her out the door.

“You know, Garcia’s right, we should probably record this in case any of us miss something,” Tara says with a nod of her head before she looks at Emily for permission.

The older woman sighs before giving in, “Go ahead.”

* * *

It’s sometime later and the rest of the team, Tara, JJ, Reid, Luke and Rossi were stilling probing Emily and all were a little exhausted from the expedition. But they hadn’t managed to find out much more that was helpful in the investigation and they were at a stalemate for information.

Tara just shakes her head before she comes to some sort of conclusion with herself and turns to the older woman who was looking exhausted from combing through her prior relationship.

“Look, we’re not really getting anywhere with this line of questioning so I want to try something different,” the tall agent says as she looks seriously at her unit chief. The brunette simply nods her head in a tired manner, wanting to get somewhere so this could be over with. “I know this might be difficult but there is certainly a sexual component to these crimes so I want to ask about yours and Iris’ sex life.”

“I guess if you think it will help then yeah, of course,” Emily nods and sighs, she was visibly uncomfortable with the idea and most of the team could see it. JJ in particular was probably just as uncomfortable with the matter so she quickly stands from the roundtable. The rest of their team snap their heads up at her sudden movement.

“Uh, I need a break,” JJ says quickly, she notes it was nearing dinnertime and quickly comes up with an excuse for her absence. “I need to check on the boys and to make sure my mom has everything she needs since we could be at this all night.”

“Yeah, of course, go ahead,” Emily says with a nod of her head and watches the woman quickly exit the room as if it had suddenly caught fire.

“You know, I was thinking maybe it would be best if Tara and Emily held this conversation in private and if any pertinent information comes to light then they could share it with us,” Reid suggests, gaging the room of profilers before him. It’s not that he was uncomfortable with the matter, he just wanted to give his friend and unit chief more privacy.

“Of course, the genius is right,” Rossi says with a nod before he pats Alvez on the shoulder who also stands with him. “Let us know.”

And the two men quickly follow Reid out of the room. As the lanky man makes his exit, he spots JJ headed for the secluded kitchen area and he follows her. Rossi simply makes his way to his office and Alvez seems to be headed towards Garcia's lair to figure out what Matt and her had found.

“JJ, wait up,” Reid says quickly as he now catches up with the blonde woman who just continues on into the kitchen and grabs a water bottle.

“What’s up, Reid?” she asks a little shortly of the man. She had honestly grown more and more irritated as the afternoon drug on and more and more personal question were practically interrogated out of Emily.

“Why did you react like that just now?” Reid questions the woman, he understood in the sense that Emily needed her privacy on the subject but it seemed like more than that for the blonde.

“It was just what I said, I needed a break and I’m starting to get a headache,” JJ says as she rubs her forehead. “We’ve been at this profile for over-”

“6 hours, 9 mins and 42 seconds,” Reid spouts off the exact time since they had been led to the conference room earlier by Emily. “But I’ve seen you work for over 72 hours straight with no break and Emily could be in danger. What’s really going on?”

“Reid, it’s nothing,” JJ sighs as she makes her way past the man, trying to escape the man’s questioning eyes now.

“It’s not nothing,” the genius manages to say quickly and this stops JJ in her tracks as she looks back at her friend now. “Look I know we didn’t all know about Emily being gay but that shouldn’t really come as a shock if you think about it. And I’ve never known you to be homophobic before.”

“What?” the blonde asks almost offended at what he was insinuating. “Spence, you know I’m not homophobic.”

Reid takes the opportunity to spout off what he had read up on about experience of LGBT people coming out, “I know it can be awkward at first when a friend of the same sex comes out but-”

“This is not about Emily being gay or bisexual, Reid,” JJ says with an easy shake of her head. _Not entirely_ , she thinks anyway.

“Then why did you react that way when Emily’s sex life came up?” the man probes of the blonde agent now. “I just assumed with the way you, Emily and Garcia all have your girls nights that you’ve talked about that kind of thing before.”

“We all know Pen is free with sharing when it comes to that sort of thing and I’ve always felt I could talk about that with Garcia,” JJ regales but is hesitant to continue. “But me and Em... it’s different, we’re not like that.”

“Oh, I assumed you guys were just as close considering your history,” Spencer says with a shrug of his shoulders, his eyes were earnest and he hadn’t meant anything by it but JJ takes offense anyway.

“We are, Reid,” she defends slightly before sighing. “It’s just different.”

“How is it different if you-” and he stops himself short, JJ can see it in his entire demeanor that he is calculating something, possibly weighing probabilities. “Wait, are you jealous?”

JJ seems stunted by the question, for all of Reid’s smarts, she honestly hadn’t thought that he would ever draw this conclusion. “What are you talking about, Spence?”

“Are you jealous of Iris Preston?” the genius asks more directly now and was simply waiting for an answer before pressing for more information.

“Why would I possibly be jealous of a sociopath?” the blonde asks in an absurd and offended tone.

“Because she had sex and a real relationship with Emily,” the man says as if it’s the most simple thing in the world. “The only other reason you would react that way is if-”

“Reid, leave it alone,” JJ’s patience had thinned to almost nonexistent now and she needed to get as far away from this conversation as was possible but she knew somewhere deep down that her friend only had the best of intention and that he wouldn’t let it go.

“You want me to leave it alone cause I’m right,” Reid states. “I mean you are one of the first members that Emily truly got close to. In late 2006, less than a year after she joined the unit, you encouraged her to have children. When you broke up with Will and you thought we didn’t know about you two, it was Emily who got you to admit it. When Emily and I were held by Benjamin Cyrus, you were very pregnant with Henry and were limited in your role with the case but you insisted in being on site even though you knew that place was a ticking time bomb.”

“Reid,” JJ says in an attempt to stop the man in his rambling but she knew it was damn near impossible.

“And when Emily was abducted by Doyle, you were on an important operation in Afghanistan with Cruz, Hastings and Askari, you had also just found out you were pregnant, yet you dropped everything and even lied to us to make sure she was safe,” Reid regales as if he had just put the key piece of the puzzle together. “There is only one kind of love that a mother would risk losing both herself and her children for-”

“Reid, stop, just stop!” JJ suddenly raises her voice at her friend and colleague, her patience worn out. She raises her hands to even herself. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I just don’t need to hear about Emily’s sex life to know what kind of woman we’re looking for.”

“Iris Marie Preston, 5’7, 115 pounds with an athletic build, blonde hair, blue eyes, early 40s,” Reid says, stating the facts about the woman as if they were a revelation. “She’s smart and has a tendency to be manipulative and lie. Sound familiar?”

“Reid,” JJ warns one final time, she had heard the insult laced in his words. She knew he often had the best of intention, she didn’t think this was much different but he was just trying to get a reaction to gage from her now so she grits her teeth. “Leave it alone.”

“You really are in love with Emily,” Reid’s eyes soften in his realization. “You just never knew that you actually had a chance with her before and that’s why you’re upset right now, isn’t it?”

“If you’ll excuse me, I have to check on my sons,” JJ starts to walk away from the man before he suddenly draws her back in.

“When were you planning on telling us that you and Will are getting a divorce?” the man drops the unexpected bomb and for the second time in the conversation, JJ is stopped in her tracks as she looks back at the man incredulously. It’s as if the man were reading her mind now. “You never have pictures of Will on your desk anymore, whenever we work with DC Metro homicide you immediately check who the investigator is like you’re trying to avoid running into him at work and you’ve also started fidgeting nervously with your wedding ring which you never used to do, almost in an attempt to hide the fact that you’re even still wearing it.” 

“I was going to tell you after the process was finalized,” JJ says with a shrug, this was something she had told herself she would admit to readily if anyone ever figured it out. Reid had and she had to own up to it. “Things are messy right now.”

“Are you getting divorce cause Will found out that you’re in love with Emily?” Reid asks seriously.

“No, it was Will who found someone else actually,” JJ says with a shake of her head. “But he might’ve had the idea that there was someone else I wanted, with how dedicated I am to the job and how many long hours we work but he never accused me of anything.”

“Are you going to tell her?” Reid asks as he suddenly swallows thickly. He hadn’t put this together before but he saw it now. He saw it in every interaction that JJ and Emily had ever had, between their longing looks and the way it was always the other that they leaned on. “Are you gonna give her a chance this time to make it right?”

“I don’t know if it can be made right if it were ever wrong, Reid,” JJ says with an honest shake of her head. “She’s my unit chief now.”

“And yet you’ve worked so well together all these years despite the fact that you’ve both been in love with each other,” Reid says seriously.

“Reid, Emily is not in love with me, okay?” JJ says seriously, like she knew it to be a hundred percent fact. “We’re friends, she’s never seen me that way and she's had her opportunities.”

“She probably didn’t think she stood a chance against a guy like Will especially when she didn’t even know that you were bisexual too,” Reid says honestly. “I never knew and you're my best friend. You never gave her a chance.”

“I’m good at appearances, Reid,” JJ says with a shrug of her shoulders. “It’s what I do, it made me a good liaison and it’s what makes me good at my job now as a profiler.”

With that, JJ walks away. She had to walk away for her sanity. She couldn’t deal with Reid's attitude on the matter now. He may act like he knows everything but this, this he knew absolutely nothing about.

* * *

After his confrontation with JJ, Reid was more than a little unsettled but as always he could not stop until he had all the answers to the mystery that had presented itself. That’s how he finds himself walking back into the conference room where Emily and Tara were still in the midst of their interview.

The young genius seems to immediately regret the decision however as he notices that Emily is leaning over the round table, her head had fallen into her hands and she seems a little distraught.

“Did you need something, Reid?” Tara asks as she turns her attention to the scrawny man who hadn’t said a word since he had entered the room.

“I need to talk to Emily about something,” Reid regales the woman but keeps his eyes trained on his friend who he was starting to worry about.

“Does it pertain to the case?” the tall female agent inquires, curious if they had found anything.

“Uh, no, this is more of a personal matter,” the genius before he starts to turn back to the door now. “But it can wait. 

“No, I actually think now is a good time for a break,” Tara says easily. She reaches over and wraps her hand around Emily’s forearm who seems to finally come out of whatever trance she was lost in. The agent simply lends a reassuring nod to her unit chief before getting up and exiting.

Emily doesn’t turn entirely to the man who had entered to her left, she merely looks at him out of the corner of her eye as she asks her question, “What is it, Reid?”

“I need to ask you a personal question,” the man says as he approaches the table where Emily still sat. 

“Yeah, I got that from ‘personal matter,’” she quips shortly. She was tired and drained from all she had recovered in her memory and all that she had relived in that time.

“Are you in love with JJ?” Reid asks simply enough and the older woman now turns her head completely to stare at the man as if he had grown a second head all together.

“Just because you know that I’m bisexual doesn’t mean you get to start asking if I’m in love with every woman I work with, Reid,” Emily snaps a little angrily, she doesn’t know what had prompted the question but she couldn’t help but be a little defensive about the matter.

“No, no, that’s not what I meant,” Reid says with a shake of his head as pulls out the chair next to Emily and takes a seat. “What I meant is that I see the way you two look at each other, I see your ex and she looks exactly like JJ and I-”

“That woman is nothing like JJ,” Emily defends seriously.

“Exactly, she may look like JJ, may have pretended to be kind, intelligent and loving like JJ but she’s not her,” Reid says with a shake of his head. “When you first got here, to the BAU, JJ reminded you of Iris, didn’t she?”

“What’s your point?” Emily asks exhausted. She didn’t feel like putting up with Reid’s mind games right now. Especially on this subject matter.

“My point is that you’ve always felt something stronger for JJ than friendship but you were scared,” Reid says softly. “You were scared that she would turn out like Iris and by time that you realized that she never would, it was too late, wasn’t it?”

“JJ made her choice a long time ago, Reid,” Emily says with a shake of her head, looking back at the man again now. “I came to terms with that.”

“And yet you’ve been unable to sustain a serious relationship since you met her,” Reid observes. “It’s almost like you’ve been waiting for her this entire time.”

“There may be other reasons for that,” Emily says coldly.

“Maybe,” Reid nods, understanding that he wasn’t going to get more out of the unit chief now. So he stands but looks at her seriously. “I just think you should ask her how she’s feels about you sometime, that’s all.”

With that said, Reid exits the room quietly. Emily was shaking her head and starting to steam at all she had had to face today. She had lost her friend and ex-lover, another former lover was off killing women because of her and now Reid was inquiring about feelings that she had harbored for her best friend for as long as she had known her. She had had enough. 

* * *

“JJ, you need to hear this,” the blonde hears Reid calling over from his desk as he rips the ancient headset he was wearing off of his head and approaches her now. He runs the time back on the phone as he then hits play on the device.

JJ immediately knows what the man was listening to but she didn’t want to hear it, she didn’t know if she could hear it. So she sighs and rubs her forehead, “Spence, I already told you-”

“You need to hear this,” is all the genius says and JJ gives in, trusting the man’s instincts.

When JJ hears Tara’s voice come from the speaker of the phone, her sinking suspicions are realized as she hears the agent asking Emily a very personal question, “Were you and her ever rough when you were together? Did she have any kinks that you were uncomfortable with?”

The blonde has to take in a breath to steel herself to hear Emily’s response to the question, “I mean, I’ve never been shy when it comes to sex I guess, we had our games but nothing that seemed to cross the line. Well, not until the night we broke up.”

“What happened on the night you broke up?” Tara asks in a kind voice, you can tell she didn’t want to push the older woman but was simply coercing the answer out of her as she was trained to do.

“She came over and she looked like she had had a rough day, I invited her in, of course, and asked if she wanted to talk about it but she just jumped me,” Emily says seriously, JJ could hear the sense of alarm in the brunette’s tone now. She had shocked herself remembering what had happened. “She pulled out this large pocket knife that she had, she said that she knew I liked it rough and that she knew I would like it if she pretended she was raping me.”

At hearing the older woman tell the story, JJ shuts her eyes tight, her hand falls over them and she feels her insides go a little shaky in reaction. She didn’t want to hear, she shouldn’t be hearing this from anyone except Emily herself but whatever was on the tape clearly revealed the psyche of the unsub that they needed to find. The woman that JJ swore she could strangle if she ever encountered her.

“At that point, I shoved her off of me but she kept coming at me,” Emily says with a shaky voice now. “She thought that I was playing along but I wasn’t, I called her a ‘crazy bitch’ and told her to get out but it just encouraged her more so we fought a little back and forth before I managed to subdue her against a wall and disarm the knife from her hand. After I managed to get her to realize what she was doing, I broke up with her; a month and thirteen days after we had gotten together.”

“A month and thirteen days, 43, the number of stab wounds on each of the victims,” Reid says as he stops the tape. “Iris had a rape fantasy that she wanted to play out with Emily but when Emily didn’t reciprocate and broke up with her, Iris eventually decided that she would play out that fantasy in real life.”

“A female sexual sadist?” JJ wonders aloud, she honestly hadn’t experienced that in all her time with the BAU outside of a couple they had encountered in her early days with the unit, before Emily had even joined the team. “That’s rare, Spence, but not impossible I guess.”

“Exactly, this woman is a narcissistic and gets off when she’s in control of her victims,” Reid relays. “I don’t think that it’s necessarily because she was in love with Emily, it’s just that Emily was the one who she wanted to share this with and she shut her down.”

“43 times, all the women were stabbed 43 times except for Fiona this morning,” the blonde suddenly realizes something. “She stabbed Fiona 44 times, twice in the heart because she thinks today is the day that she'll get Emily back.”

“She's definitely going after Emily,” Reid nods. “But there's no way she could ever get in here.”

JJ was trying to piece together all she had just found out when her phone starts ringing, she quickly answers, “Garcia, what have you got?”

“I tried to get ahold of Emily but I guess she’s still in with Tara so I called you,” the bubbly blonde says over speakerphone. Spencer looks back up at the conference room, he knew Tara had left Emily with him and then had let him listen to the tape while they took a break. “So I tracked Iris Preston’s father down, it turns out he was living in DC but died last month in a car accident, he was drunk.”

“That could’ve been a trigger,” JJ says suddenly shaking her head. “Does he still have any property in his name, Garcia?”

“JJ-” Reid starts to say as he taps on the shoulder of the blonde before she swats him away momentarily. 

“No, it seems Kevin Preston had failed in his political career and was flat broke,” Garcia relays the information. “His lease expired and is already being rented out.”

“JJ, Emily’s not in the conference room,” Spencer says as he hadn't taken his eyes off the roundtable room after Garcia said she couldn’t get in touch with their unit chief. He knew he had left the brunette there in an emotional state but he thought she just needed some space. “No, she wouldn’t leave, not again.”

“Wait, what?” JJ says suddenly as she stands from her desk and looks at the conference room to find it empty. Her eyes dart around the offices and she sees Rossi in his, Tara was set in the kitchen and she knew Alvez and Matt were in with Garcia and no signs of Emily anywhere. “Garcia, I need you to tap into Emily’s phone right now and give me her location.”

“On it,” Garcia says seriously, and JJ and Spencer could hear the woman typing away on the machines she referred to as her babies but they both wish it was faster. “Got her, she’s in the parking garage, headed for her car so you can still catch her.”

“Reid, I need you to call security and have them lock down the parking garage, no one gets in or out,” JJ says with gravity in her voice as the man nods. JJ grabs her gun and badge. “If Preston knows that Emily works here, which wouldn’t take more than a google search, then we have to assume she’s already here.”

“Right,” Spencer says as he was already dialing from the phone set on JJ’s desk. The blonde woman makes a straight shot for the double glass doors of the offices and was already on her way out.

* * *

JJ had never run so fast in her life, she wasn’t about to let Emily fall into the grasp of another psychopathic ex-lover if she could help it. _Jesus, Em, you really know how to pick em_ , she think as she makes it down the stairs and into the garage level that she knew the unit chief had practically residential parking in.

And she runs across the lot as fast as her feet will carry her before she sees the dark brown hair of the woman she loved more than her own life. So she yells across the garage as she quickly makes her way towards the woman, “Emily!”

She sees when Emily stops on her way to her vehicle as she approaches and turns towards her, she sees how tired and exhausted the woman looked but she couldn’t let her leave. That’s when Emily starts to say, “Look, JJ, I can’t do this right now, I don’t know what Reid told you but-”

That’s when JJ spots her, the wild, curly blonde hair and blue eyes that make up Emily’s ex and she is frozen for a moment before she is quick on her feet. She grabs ahold of the unit chief and holds her close, she pulls her weapon out and points it at the older woman now.

“Emily!” the voice of Iris Preston was now making their way to Emily’s ear and as JJ had turned her around, she now saw the woman as well but she still didn’t know what the hell the blonde agent was thinking in the moment.

“JJ, what the hell are you doing?” Emily says quietly, she eyes the gun that JJ has leveled at her head and she thinks the woman has gone mad. She sees that Iris is only ten feet away now and was armed only with her signature knife.

“Shh, follow my lead,” JJ says just as quietly into her ear and Emily isn’t sure if that isn’t the sexiest thing she had ever heard and felt but she can’t dwell on that now.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Iris says as she aims the question at JJ who seems to be manhandling the woman in only the way that the crazed blonde thought that she could.

“Taking what’s mine, of course,” JJ says lowly, in a nearly sadistic tone and Emily seems to catch onto the game that the younger agent is playing at and she eases slightly in her tension. She just hopes to hell that this will work.

“You mean what’s mine!” the female unsub says angrily with wide eyes.

“No, Emily had long forgotten about you before you killed Fiona today,” JJ says with a smile. “That was good and I have to admit that I was a little jealous when all she could talk about was you but I had a mind that I’d take her home and show her who she really belongs to.”

“You will never have her like I did, she may have gotten away the first time but she won’t get away from me now,” the crazed woman says as she licks the knife that she held in her hand. “She was mine first and nothing will ever change that.”

“Well, I hate to break it to you but you brought a knife to a gun fight, that wasn’t very smart now was it?” JJ says as she turns her attention to the brunette. “You always did have more of a thing for guns, didn’t you, Em? That’s why you got involved with law enforcement in the first place, right?”

“Yeah, right, I always thought it was the sexiest thing when a woman leveled her gun at me,” Emily says with a vehement nod to her head. She sees out of the corner of her eye that Spencer has now made it to the garage along with Lewis, Rossi, Alvez and Simmons who all have their guns aimed at her ex. “When you showed at my apartment and pulled out that knife, it just wasn’t enough for me, Iris but you could be, you know?”

“Em, what are you doing?” JJ asks seriously as she feels Emily start to slip away from her grasp and JJ has a better mind to not let her but she trusts the older woman, she has to. As Emily pulls away, the blonde agent sees the unit chief go for the gun on her hip but instead of pulling it on the unsub, she simply offers it as she grows closer to her ex. “Emily, don’t!”

“I don’t take orders from you anymore,” Emily turns back to JJ for moment, she simply offers a look to the younger agent that is telling her to trust her. “Iris is right, I was hers first so if she puts down the knife and takes my gun, she could have me forever.”

JJ seems to key in on exactly what the unit chief has in mind and she hates every second of it but she steels herself, tightens her jaw and levels her gun at the crazed blonde. She hoped to god that Emily knew what she was doing, she knew this unsub probably better than anyone after all.

“So what do you say, Iris?” Emily says turning her attention back to her ex. “You put down the knife and you’ll have everything you ever wanted.”

The blonde agent watches as the woman is simply lost in staring at Emily and the gun, she doesn’t even seem to register that she has six other guns pointed directly at her skull. She only sees the brunette woman so the crazed woman starts to set the knife down slowly and then makes a quick leap for the gun. Before JJ can even register herself what is happening, her unit chief has side stepped her ex and quickly has her in a chokehold.

“No, you see, you were a crazy bitch when I dated you and you’re an even crazier bitch now,” Emily tells the woman as she levels the gun point blank to her ex’s head. “You never had me, not for even a second and now you have even less of me cause I never gave you what you wanted and I never will.”

As Emily is saying this, JJ notices that Iris still managed to keep ahold of her knife in the ensuing struggle and she sees that the woman was now taking aim at the brunette’s leg. She acts fast, on instinct before she can think better of it. And before the crazy bitch has the chance to take her stab, JJ has made her way over and kicked the woman in the forearm which causes her to release the knife and fall to the ground but Emily keeps her tight hold on the woman.

“You see that woman right there,” Emily says as she laughs slightly, then looks at JJ who was still standing relatively close to her. “I had a talk with a very good friend of mine tonight and he made me realize that that woman right there is everything you’re not. Sure, she knows how to lie and she knows how to manipulate the hell out of psychos like you but she does it to protect me, not to hurt me.”

“I could protect you, Emily, I promise you if you give me the chance to prove-” Iris starts to bargain but Emily simply takes her handcuffs out and slaps them on the wrist of the woman who grimaces at how tight they are around her wrist. “You always were kinky, weren’t you, Em?”

“Oh, you have no idea,” the brunette says with a smirk on her face as she looks at the woman now. “You know what my biggest kink is? Sending people like you to death row.”

As she finishes saying this, Emily shoves the woman towards Rossi and Reid as they take ahold of her now. They quickly lead the woman into the BAU with Luke, Matt and Tara following suit. As Iris is finally out of her sight, Emily sighs and lets her head fall into her hands before she frustratedly runs her hands through her hair. She kneels for a moment, seeming exhausted from handling her ex.

JJ watches on, still trying to catch her breath and take in everything that had happened so fast before she looks back at the older woman, “You did good, Em.”

“You did fantastic, thinking on your feet like that,” Emily says with a small smile lacing her features now. “You managed to ensure I was safe, you got into her head and then you disarmed her so good job, Jareau.”

“You’re the one who got her into the chokehold, I just finished the job,” JJ says with a shrug and her own smile. “I know we’ve both had a long day but what do you say we get the bitch processed and head out for drinks, I buy first round.”

“Nah, that’s Rossi job,” Emily says jokingly with a shake of her head as she stands again. “But that sounds like a good idea.”

“Pretty slow to get up there, Prentiss,” JJ says with a wide smile now. “You getting old on us?”

“Fuck you, Jareau,” Emily says with a laugh as she approaches her friend and wraps an arm around her and they walk side by side.

 _Gladly_ , is all the blonde woman can think as they make their way back inside.

* * *

It was later that night when the entire team was now out at a local bar, Rossi had indeed bought the first round as JJ and Emily simply laughed at their own inside joke. They had made it through the second drink but now most of the team were dragging, seeming exhausted from their day on the case.

“Am I just getting old or is this just not as fun as it used to be?” the tech analyst quips as JJ laughs out loud at her friend. “Oh what, miss mom, don’t you have that hunk o’ burning Cajun love to get home to?”

JJ clears her throat at the question, she meets Reid’s pure and sober eyes as he nods at her with a smile. She tilts her head and her drink up as she quickly says, “No, actually.”

“What are you talking about?” Penelope suddenly asks seriously as she aims her question for the blonde. “What happened?”

“Uh, life happened, Garcia,” JJ shrugs. “Will and I are getting a divorce.”

“Wait, no, you can’t just say ‘life happens’ and tell us that,” Garcia says seriously. “You’ve been with him for over ten years.”

“And we grew apart,” the blonde offers. “It’s really not that big of a deal.”

“But, but,” the tech analyst starts to protest before she meets the brown eyes and sharp eyebrows of Alvez.

“Leave it alone, Penelope,” Luke sings his warning to his friend.

“JJ, why didn’t you tell me before I made a fool out of myself earlier?” Tara protests in jest.

“I don’t know,” JJ says with a shake of her head, still nursing the drink in her hand. “I guess I just wasn’t ready but I had a talk with Spence earlier and he helped me see things a little clearer.”

Emily had been quiet in light of the revelation, her mind was all over the place but the news was welcome in her ears. She just didn’t know how to process it yet and what that meant for her. “Seems like the genius doctor made his rounds this evening, huh?” she jokingly offers as she smacks the man next to her in the chest.

“It’s what I do,” Reid says with a shrug and light smile on his face as he looks over at his blonde and brunette friend and gives them a reassuring nod. JJ has to break eye contact with the man and take another sip of her drink to still herself.

“Alright, I think Penelope is right, we’re all getting too old for these shenanigans and it’s past old Rossi’s bedtime,” the elder man says seriously before he starts to raise his glass in gesture. “But before we call it a night, I want to make a toast; to putting to bed some crazy old exes in our lives and celebrating the good ones that we’ve had!”

The group seems to laugh a little before loud bellows of ‘cheers!’ and ‘here, here’ go around as they all clink their glasses together, many of them downing their drinks and making their exits. Some were headed home to their kids, or in Garcia and Alvez’s case, their pets and others were headed home to read a nice book knowing that they had all accomplished their mission for the day.

JJ and Emily seem to be the only members standing as the rest of the team files out. For a moment they remain silent. The air between them growing thick but not awkwardly so. They just let it flow between them in the moment, neither having the words to say or knowing if they were ready to say them.

The unit chief is the first to find her nerve, as she clears her throat, “You may not have a husband to go home to but what about the boys?”

“They're at home with my mom,” JJ offers with a nod of her head. “They’re fine and I figured that an old friend needed more tonight than they did anyway.”

“An old friend, huh?” the brunette asks seriously.

“Yeah, an old friend who mentioned something about me being everything her crazy ex isn’t,” JJ lets the word slip from her mouth without really thinking, she figures it was the liquid courage getting to her but it had been on the tip of her tongue ever since Emily had said it earlier. “Did you really mean that?”

“Uh, yeah, well, I might've been saying that to get under Iris’ skin a little, of course,” the brunette offers and the blonde just nods her head in acknowledgement. “But that doesn’t make it any less true.”

“Are we ever gonna talk about this?” JJ asks seriously now, setting her glass down on the bar and seeming a little frustrated. “What we were never brave enough to talk about before?”

“It’s not that I’m not brave now, JJ, it’s just,” Emily says but then pauses to sigh. “I just don’t know if I’m ready for all of that again just yet.”

“Well, I’m not sure that I’m ready for all of _that_ either just yet,” JJ says with a shrug before she turns to her unit chief and looks at her seriously before cracking a smile. “But you could take me home and I’ll promise not to go all nine circles of hell on you in ten years.”

Emily can’t help but offer her own hearty laugh at the blonde’s ridiculous joke before she lifts her glass and says, “Alright, but first, I have my own toast to make.”

“Oh, alright,” JJ says as she picks up what remained in her own glass and raises it, staring now into Emily’s deep brown eyes.

“To leaving the past behind, endings that hopefully lead to new beginnings,” the unit chief says as she meets JJ’s gaze now. As their glasses clink together, JJ finds herself leaning into her unit chief and Emily meets her in the middle and their lips find each other like the lost lovers that they had been for the last decade. Both pull away from the kiss a little stunned and still staring into each other’s eyes. Emily grabs some cash out of her oversized bag that she carries on her shoulder and sets it down on the bar. “Come on, let’s go.”

As Emily takes her hand, JJ had never felt so complete. She thinks about all that she had been carrying around with her since she and Will had separated. What once felt like baggage was slowly lifting from her being and for the first the time in her life, she feels no fear and no shame. The blonde simply feels free.

**Author's Note:**

> fin.
> 
> p.s. i started to write this seriously but then realized i didn’t have a real ending for it (probably never would) so i just decided to have fun with it. can you spot where i gave up on it? anyway, hope you enjoyed this ridiculous parody of every jemily fic ever.


End file.
